1. VOWELS VERSUS CONSONANTS
Several
examples in the last chapter involved vowels: for instance, we found that there
is free variation for some speakers between [i] and [ε] in economic, but that these two vowels nonetheless
contrast, as shown by minimal pairs like pet – peat, or hell – heal. We also saw that the usual contrast of /eI /, /ε/ and /æ/ is neutralized before /r/ for many
General American speakers, who pronounce Mary, merry and marry homophonously. It follows that the central ideas
of phonemic contrast, with minimal pairs determining the members of the phoneme
system, and rules showing allophonic variation in different contexts, apply
equally to vowels and to consonants; free variation, phonetic similarity and
neutralization affect both classes of sounds too.
2. THE ANATOMY OF A VOWEL
In
classifying vowels, we need not indicate airstream mechanism, since it will
always be pulmonic egressive, and we can generally assume that vowels are all
voiced and oral. To describe vowels adequately and accurately, we then need to
consider three different parameters, all of which can be seen as modifications
of the place or manner of articulation continua for consonants: as we shall
see, these are height, frontness and rounding. Additionally, vowels may be long
or short (long ones are marked with a following below), and monophthongs or
diphthongs. The examples in the sections below will be from Standard Southern
British English (sometimes called RP, or Received Pronunciation), and General
American, the most widely spoken variety of English in the United States,
excluding the southern states, and the eastern seaboard, especially Boston, New
England and New York City. SSBE and GA are generally thought of by English and
American speakers respectively as not having any strong regional marking, and
both are varieties highly likely to be heard in broadcasting, for instance in
reading the television or radio news.
2.1 The front–back dimension
Front vowels
are produced with the front of the tongue raised towards the hard palate
(although not raised enough, remember, to obstruct the airflow and cause local
friction; vowels are approximants). The vowels in (1) are front. These could,
in principle, equally be described as palatal, and this might be helpful in
making phonological rules transparent, the rule palatalizing velar /k/ before
front vowels in kitchen, key, give, geese looked rather perplexing as the relationship
between palatal and front was not obvious. However, calling front vowels
palatal would be misleading, since frontness covers a larger area than
[palatal], as we shall see below; and it contrasts with completely different
alternatives, namely central and back, rather than labial, alveolar, dental,
velar and so on.
(1) Front vowels
SSBE GA
kit I I
dress e e
trap æ æ
fleece iː i:
face eI eI
Conversely, back vowels have the back of the
tongue raised, towards the soft palate or velum. The vowels in (2) are back.
(2) Back vowels
SSBE GA
lot ɒ ɑ:
foot ʊ
ʊ
palm ɑ:
ɑ:
thought ɔ: ɔ:
goat oʊ ɔː
goose u: u:
There is also a class of vowels between front
and back: these are known as central vowels, and involve a raising of the body
of the tongue towards the area where the hard and soft palate join. Central
vowels are exemplified in (3). The most common of these in English, [ə], is known as
schwa, and only appears in unstressed syllables.
(3) Central vowels
SSBE GA
about ə
ə
nurse ɜː ɜː r
strut ʌ ʌ
2.2 The high–low dimension
High vowels
have the tongue raised most towards the roof of the mouth; if the raising was
significantly greater, then friction would be produced, making a fricative
consonant, not a vowel. The high vowels from the last section are in (4).
(4) High vowels
SSBE GA
kit I I
fleece
iː iː
foot ʊ ʊ
goose u: u:
Low vowels are
those where the tongue is not raised at all, but rather lowered from its
resting position: when you produce a low vowel, you will be able to feel your
mouth opening and your jaw dropping, even if it is not very easy to figure out
quite what your tongue is doing. Low
vowels are
given in (5).
(5) Low vowels
SSBE GA
trap æ æ
lot ɑ:
palm ɑ:
ɑ:
Again, there is
a further class intermediate between high and low, namely the mid vowels, shown
in (6). These can if necessary be further sub-classified as high mid (like the face and goat vowels) or low mid (like the dress, thought, strut vowels) depending on whether they are nearer the
high end of the scale, or nearer the low end.
(6) Mid vowels
SSBE GA
face eI eI
goat oυ ɔ:
dress e
e
lot ɒ
thought ɔ: ɔ:
about ə
ə
nurse ɜː ɜː r
strut ʌ ʌ
2.3 Lip position
In the high
back [u:] vowel of goose, there is tongue raising in the region
of the soft palate; but in addition, the lips are rounded. Vowels in any of the
previous categories may be either rounded, where the lips are protruded
forwards, or unrounded, where the lips may be either in a neutral position, or
sometimes slightly spread (as for a high front vowel, like [i:] fleece). However, it is overwhelmingly more common
cross linguistically for back vowels to be rounded than for front ones, and for
high vowels to be rounded than low ones; this is borne out in English, as you
can see in (7).
(7) Rounded vowels
SSBE GA
lot ɒ
foot ʊ ʊ
thought ɔ: ɔ:
goat oʊ ɔː
goose u: u:
2.4 Length
Using these
three dimensions of frontness, height and rounding, we can now define the vowel
in fleece
as high, front
and unrounded; that in goose
as high, back and rounded; and the unstressed vowel of about, schwa, as mid, central and unrounded.
However, our elementary descriptions would class the kit vowel as high, front and unrounded, and
the foot
vowel as high,
back and rounded; these labels make them indistinguishable from the clearly
different vowels of fleece
and goose respectively. SSBE and GA speakers very
readily perceive the fleece
and kit vowels, and the goose and foot vowels, as different; and there are plenty of
minimal pairs to support a phoneme distinction, as in peat – pit, leap – lip, Luke – look, fool – full. This distinction is usually made in terms of
vowel length: in SSBE and GA, the vowels in (8) are consistently produced as
longer than those in (9).
(8) Long vowels
SSBE GA
fleece
iː iː
goose u: u:
goat ɔː
thought ɔ: ɔ:
lot ɑ:
palm ɑ:
ɑ:
nurse ɜː ɜː r
(9) Short vowels
SSBE GA
kit I I
dress e e
trap æ æ
lot ɒ
foot ʊ ʊ
about ə
ə
strut ʌ ʌ
This is not to say, however, that the only difference between [iː] and [I], or [u:] and [υ:], is one of length: the quantity
difference goes along with a difference in quality. [iː] is higher and fronter than [I]; [u:] is higher and backer than [ʊ]; and similarly, [ɑ:] in palm is lower and backer than the
corresponding short [a] in trap. In general,
long vowels in English are more peripheral, or articulated in a more extreme
and definite way, than their short counterparts. Some phonologists use a
feature [}tense] rather than length to express
this difference, with the long, more peripheral vowels being [+tense], and the
short, more centralized ones being [– tense], or lax.
2.5 Monophthongs and diphthongs
Most of the
vowels we have considered so far have been monophthongs, in which the quality
of the vowel stays fairly consistent from the beginning of its production to
the end. However, there are also several diphthongs in English. Diphthongs
change in quality during their production, and are typically transcribed with
one starting point, and a quite different end point; as might be expected from
this description, diphthongs are typically long vowels. In English, all
diphthongs have the first element as longer and more prominent than the second,
and are known as falling diphthongs. Three diphthongs are found very generally
in accents of English, and are shown in (10).
(10) Diphthongs (i)
SSBE GA
price aI
aI
mouth aʊ aʊ
choice ɔI ɔI
The long
high-mid front and back vowels in face and goat are also characteristically diphthongal in SSBE
and GA, as shown in (11).
(11) Diphthongs (ii)
SSBE GA
face eI eI
goat oʊ ɔː
Finally, SSBE has a third set of diphthongs,
which are known as the centering diphthongs as they all have the mid central
vowel schwa as the second element. These centering diphthongs developed
historically before /r/, which was then lost following vowels in the ancestor
of SSBE; they consequently appear mainly where there is an <r> in the
spelling, although they have now been generalized to some other words, like idea.
GA speakers have a diphthong in idea, but still pronounce the historical
[r] in near, square, force, cure and therefore lack centring diphthongs in these
words (see (12)).
(12) Centring diphthongs
SSBE GA
Near Iə ir
square eə
er
force ɔə/ɔ: o:r
cure υə υr
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